All my contacts in Address Book suddenly vanished

Hi,
I was updating a contact in Address Book, (usual story, new address and email address arrived in a Christmas card), and when I clicked on the 'save' button my address book window suddeny lost all it's data. The page I was updating, which had previously been showing the contact details, now showed as 'No card selected' And at the bottom of the window it said '0 cards'
All my groups were showing as having nothing in them either.
Any ideas how I might get all my contact data back, please?
(I have a feeling that the data is there somewhere, because if I start to write a new email message auto-complete remembers and fills in the address. (Which it gets from address book, doesn't it?)

Update:
I have used Time Machine to replace the Address Book app with the app that was running satisfactorily a few hours ago, but it has made no difference whatever. I still have a completely blank book.
Is there a data file somewhere I could re-load using Time Machine?

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